Insights from HCEG Thought Leaders

The historic cancellation of the 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition has impacted the way healthcare leaders and change-makers obtain information, exchange ideas, and network with others. In the last two weeks, many conferences have canceled or are canceling their physical events and are ‘going virtual’ to salvage the content and speakers they had lined up for their events. Other conference organizers are scrambling to figure out how to support their attendees and exhibitors going forward. Indeed, the conference and media industry – healthcare or otherwise – are mapping and paying the digital freight to help ensure their future.

Here’s some information on the virtual events and content the HealthCare Executive Group, our sponsors, partners, and associates are sharing to make the best of the cancellations of major healthcare conferences like the 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. And a bit of history on how HCEG provides a year-round approach to supporting the information and networking needs of healthcare executives and change-makers.

HIMSS 20 Cancellation – Collaborating Virtually

Almost immediately after HIMSS Leadership announced the cancellation of the 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, a slew of announcements about virtual events and content sharing were made by various speakers, attendees, exhibitors, and others involved in the HIMSS20 conference. This cancellation was the first time in nearly 60 years that the HIMSS Conference was canceled. And no one: attendees, speakers, panelists, sponsors, exhibitors, and/or those hired to produce the 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition have NOT been impacted in one way or another by this cancellation.

Information and Insight About the Future of Healthcare Conferences – Go Virtual

The comfort of meeting and exchanging ideas and information with each other at in-person events has changed. There’s no denying this fact. People are going to have to get comfortable with sharing information, making acquaintances, and networking with others in new, largely unknown and somewhat difficult to use, channels and platforms. Thankfully, the HealthCare Executive Group has decades of experience facilitating interaction between healthcare executives and the companies that support their mission.

HCEG has also established both formal and informal partnerships with complementary organizations that also serve our members and other healthcare industry participants associates. These partnerships extend and complement the content, networking opportunities, and value offered by HCEG and its partners. For 2020, these partnerships include being a HIMSS Collaboration Partner and AHIP Educational Partner.

HCEG Sponsor Partners – Conferences Go Virtual

HCEG sponsors scheduled to present in Orlando have stepped up and performed the work to share most of their scheduled presentations. We urge you to check out these virtual shares – webinars, recordings, blog posts, and other information – from our sponsor partners:

See the Virtual On-Demand HIMSS20 Experience from Change Healthcare here.

Surescripts:

Webinar recordings, blog posts and other digital content intended to help HIMSS20 attendees understand how Cost & Transparency and the Consumer Experience are key to improving healthcare outcomes are shared here by Surescripts and in the following downloads.

Other HIMSS20 Participants – Go Virtual

Over the last week, dozens, if not 100’s, of virtual presentations and digital artifacts have been shared to help ameliorate the cancellation of the 2020 HIMSS Conference. Here are some of those digital shares of potential value:

The Near Future of Virtual & Intimate In-Person Events

Over the last week, since the 2020 HIMSS Conference has been canceled, a number of worldwide organizations, companies, and individuals have shared valuable insight into what may turn out to be the future of long-standing ‘initiatives’

Here are a few considerations:

How will healthcare leaders and change-makers obtain the leads they’ll lose from Cancelled Conferences and Events?

How will the current organizer dominatrix move forward over the next 12-24 months?

The 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition is two weeks away and the HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG) is looking forward to attending, presenting, and exhibiting at this granddaddy of all health IT conferences. In addition to supporting members, sponsors and partners, HCEG is also a HIMSS20 Collaborator. If you’re attending the conference and haven’t already registered, be sure to use the H20Collab discount code to save on your registration here.

This post shares some information on the 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition and highlights some HIMSS Conference information related to HCEG, the HCEG Top 10, and our members and sponsors.

2020 HCEG Top 10 at HIMSS20

It’s no surprise that the session tracks at the 2020 HIMSS Conference are grouped into primary categories that largely align with the items on the 2020 HCEG Top 10. Search for sessions based on a range of filtering options here. Click on the “HIMSS Track by Topic” below to see a list of all HIMSS sessions for that specific track.

Sponsor Presentations at 2020 HIMSS Conference

Our sponsor Change Healthcare is an Anchor Exhibitor at the 2020 HIMSS Conference and, in addition to sharing insight on their products and services, will be presenting sessions at their Booth #6759. See a list of in-booth presentations here.

Payer and Provider Perspectives: Healthcare Trends for 2020

Our Executive Director, Ferris Taylor, will be presenting “Payer and Provider Perspectives: Healthcare Trends for 2020” on Wednesday, March 11th at 4:15 pm at Change Healthcare’s booth #6759. Ferris will share information on the HCEG Top 10 and the recently released 2020 Industry Pulse Report.

Surescripts Network Alliance at HIMSS20

Sponsor partner Surescripts will be participating in various presentations at the HIMSS20 conference and will be hosting a cocktail reception in their booth #2030 on Tuesday, March 10th at 5:00 pm. More info here.

Poster Presentations

One of the lesser-known sources of information at the 2020 HIMSS Conference is the various poster presentations. Be sure to check out these posters on your way to or from other sessions and events.

Networking Areas

Beyond the sessions and exhibits, the HIMSS Conference is about networking – making new connections and rekindling existing relationships. To support conference attendee networking opportunities, there are numerous networking opportunities available to HIMSS attendees including dedicated Networking Areas.

Of particular convenience are the following areas where you can meet with others – typically outside the hustle and noise of the main concourses and exhibit hall. These areas are open during conference hours as noted. Access semi-private working areas, recharge your device, network with peers and relax in the Networking Hub.

Additional Information on the 2020 HIMSS Conference

Connect with HealthCare Executive Group at HIMSS and Year Round

The 2020 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition offers a tremendous opportunity for healthcare leaders and change-makers to learn about the challenges, issues, and opportunities demanding change and innovation from all stakeholders – particularly within the U. S. healthcare system.

Over 30 years ago, C-suite leaders of healthcare organizations came together to form the Managed Care Executive Group (MCEG) – a peer-to-peer mentoring concept used to help its members solve their problems with input and advice from other group members. And 60 years before MCEG was born, Napoleon Hill – author of the popular book Think and Grow Rich – shared the idea of Mastermind Group. In 2014, the Managed Care Executive Group rebranded as the HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG) and continued its mission as a Mastermind Group for healthcare executives.

More Than a Conference Organizer, Media Outlet, or Online Networking Group

In its essence, the HealthCare Executive Group is a Mastermind group comprised of senior healthcare executives and industry leaders focused on transforming the healthcare system. HCEG is not purely a conference organizer, a media/content producer, or promoter of online events but rather an organization chartered to convene and support executive leaders of health plans, health systems, and provider organizations – throughout the year – in their mission to affect true change in our failing healthcare system.

The majority of HealthCare Executive Group members are senior executives associated with health plans, health systems, and risk-bearing provider groups. Memberships at the individual and company levels are available each providing various levels of benefits including discounted to complimentary access to our Annual Forum, events, thought-leadership, and personal development opportunities.

HCEG has established both formal and informal partnerships with complementary organizations that also serve our members and other healthcare industry participants associates. These partnerships extend and complement the content, networking opportunities, and value offered by HCEG and its partners. For 2020, these partnerships include:

Testimonies from HCEG Members

“The conference is a great conference for the level of executives and people that you have in the room talking about issues. There’s not a lot of primers at this conference which is nice. You’ve got people who are ready to dig deep on issues and can have executive-level conversations pretty quickly. And yesterday, I identified three or four potential partnerships between our organizations and how we can work to solve some of these issues together.” – Ricardo Johnson, Senior Director Healthworx at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield

“I think they nailed the 2020 Top 10 list (of challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare leadership.) I mean it, really every item on there would have been in the top of my list as well. I think that this group of people has really identified the top issues in the industry and gathered folks who are uniquely qualified to speak to them.” – Sara Stevens, VP of Healthcare Economics & Analytics Ops at Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan

“I think the word is it’s (HCEG’s Annual Forum) still intimate by design. We like to keep it roughly a hundred or so people. The last thing we wanted to be is a giant circus of people who don’t have the chance to share information and have an intimate discussion – so that’s by design.” – Richard Lungen, Managing Member at Leverage Health

Supportive, Consultative Sponsor Partners

A limited number of healthcare industry product and service vendors serve as sponsor partners to underwrite and assist with HCEG’s events, programming, and content. HCEG’s sponsor partners play a role unlike many vendors who sponsor other healthcare events. Rather than dominating speaker positions, exhibiting products in a booth, or littering HCEG’s physical and digital channels with sales messages, HCEG requires its sponsor partners to serve in a supportive, consultative role on a year-round basis.

Last year was a very busy year for the HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG.) In addition to hosting our 31st Annual Forum in our birthplace of Boston, Massachusetts, HCEG hosted two Executive Leadership Roundtables, presented the CIO & CTO Strategy Track at the 16th Annual World Health Care Congress, delivered seven webinars in conjunction with our sponsor partners, published 35 blog posts addressing challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare leadership, and presented at several of our partner’s conferences and events.

Moreover, in 2019 HCEG became an Educational Partner with America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and a Collaboration Partner with the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS.) For 2020, we have an equally insightful and interesting agenda of live, in-person and virtual events and content in store.

31st HCEG Annual Forum

Our 2019 Annual Forum marking our 31st annual event since HCEG was founded in 1988 took place in Boston, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the HealthCare Executive Group. Check out this page for the agenda, photos, and some proceedings from the forum. You can also view video interviews of various speakers and attendees here.

Executive Leadership Roundtables & Special Presentations

In addition, HCEG presented the CIO & CTO Strategy Track at the 16th Annual World Health Care Congress. This track consisted of six separate sessions over two days. See the recap of the WHCC event and the CIO & CTO Strategy track presented by HCEG here.

2020 HCEG Top 10 List & 10th Annual Industry Pulse Survey

The 2020 HCEG Top 10 list of challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare industry leaders, innovators, and change-makers was created by participants of our 31st Annual Forum. This list was then used as the basis for the Industry Pulse research survey sponsored by HCEG and sponsor partner Change Healthcare.

One of the ways we share healthcare information, insight, & ideas is via our Webinar Series Events and blog posts. Our blog posts share insight, information and ideas on items in the HCEG Top 10 list, recaps of webinars and HCEG hosted events, and other information of interest to healthcare industry leaders, innovators, and change-makers.

Check out this blog post for information, insight, & ideas presented in our webinars and blog posts in 2019.

Looking Forward to HCEG Events & Content in 2020

For 2020, the HealthCare Executive Group has a full schedule of live, in-person and virtual events and a full calendar of content throughout the year. In addition to releasing the results of the 10th Annual Industry Pulse research survey conducted in partnership with Change Healthcare next month, we’ll be creating the 2021 HCEG Top 10 list at our 32nd Annual Forum this coming September.

32nd HCEG Annual Forum

Our 32nd Annual Forum will be held in Boston, MA on September 21-23, 2020. We’re planning our best forum ever and have some interesting speakers, special events and new information-sharing opportunities planned. Sign up here to receive Annual Forum updates and registration details.

In addition to our Annual Forum, we’re planning to host several Executive Leadership Roundtables at major healthcare industry conferences:

10th Annual Industry Pulse Survey

The results of the 10th Annual Industry Pulse survey will be released next month. This important industry survey is based on the 2020 HCEG Top 10 List and offers a deeper dive into the top challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare leadership. Here’s last year’s Industry Pulse report.

Monthly Themes for HCEG Content in 2020

Every year, HCEG events – including live, in-person events and virtual events like webinars and blog posts – are driven by items on the current HCEG Top 10 list. In addition, HCEG hosts and presents a Webinar Series Event nearly every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. And publishes blog posts on a bi-weekly basis. In addition to topics centered on specific events and HCEG Top 10 items, content created and curated by HCEG will be focused on the following themes in each month of 2020:

The HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG) offers value to the healthcare industry aimed squarely at its health plan roots – and to forward-thinking, still emerging health systems and ‘value-based providers’ transitioning to ‘risk-bearing providers.’ One of the ways we share healthcare information, insight, & ideas is via our Webinar Series Events and blog posts.

In 2019, the HealthCare Executive Group hosted and presented the following webinars:

Social Determinants of Health: A Payer’s Strategic Advantage

Kim Ingram and Harry Merkin of HealthEdge joined healthcare industry veteran Constance Sjoquist to share examples of Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) in practice and provide guidance on how healthcare organizations can get started addressing and overcoming challenges organizations face with regards to SDoH. Watch the recording here.

We Can Stop Diseases, But Can We Stop The Fax?

Jeff Sponaugle, CTO of Surescripts was joined by associates Ashley Fifield and Melissa Warnke to review technologies that enhance prescribing and inform care decisions, to get patients the right prescription at the right cost, the first time. View the recording here and access the presentation deck here.

The Doctor Can’t See You Now: New Ways to Speed Up and Improve Provider On-Boarding

Appian, a leading vendor of low-code application development platforms, shared best practices and tools to automate and standardize provider onboarding while minimizing risk to the revenue cycle and operations. View the recording here and access the presentation deck here.

Using People, Process & Technology to Grow Your Business

Sal Gentile, CEO of Friday Health Plans, and Dannette Coleman of HealthEdge shared insight on the art and science of people, process and technology to successfully grow their respective health insurance businesses both from the ground up as well as within an established organization. View the recording here.

Solving the Rubik’s Cube of Payer Data

Mayur Yermaneni and Marina Brown of eQHealth Solutions discussed why it isn’t the volume of payer data that makes it so valuable – it’s the unique view that payer data offers into member/patient health. View the recording here.

The Pulse of the Healthcare Industry for 2019

HCEG Executive Director Ferris Taylor and David Gallegos of Change Healthcare reviewed the analysis of the latest Industry Pulse survey and offered insights into the thoughts and opinions of surveyed healthcare leaders exploring how healthcare leaders are preparing for the future. View the recording here and access the presentation deck here.

HCEG’s 2019 Top 10 List & 9th Annual Industry Pulse Report

HCEG’s Executive Director Ferris Taylor and Digital Strategist Steve Sisko share an overview of the 2019 HCEG Top 10 list and how the 9th Annual Industry Pulse Research Survey builds upon specific items of the HCEG Top 10 list. View the recording here.

Consumer Experience has been a high-ranking item on HCEG’s Top 10 list of challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare leaders over the last decade. And last week, 500+ healthcare industry professionals gathered in Chicago at the 2019 AHIP Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum to present and discuss the importance of the healthcare consumer experience and various approaches to leveraging digital health platforms and tools to effect an improved consumer experience.

Look forward to 2020 and more information and insight shared by healthcare industry leaders, innovators, and change-makers improving healthcare and health delivery.

What Should Be Keeping Health Care Executives up at Night?

As costs continue to rise, more financial responsibility is shifted to individuals, and non-traditional companies disrupt the traditional healthcare space, executives and industry leaders are under tremendous pressure to transform their organizations due to the challenge of providing coverage for healthcare services offering reasonable outcomes at a fair price.

Check out this blog post to learn more about the following topics addressed by three health industry leaders: Ian K. Gordon, Dr. Esteban Lopez, and Ferris Taylor:

• How challenges, issues, & opportunities have evolved over the last few years • How they’re transforming and innovating their organizations • What excites them about the future for health care • How health plans help support health care consumer’s • How socioeconomic status and social determinants of health impact health plans • The role of health plans in addressing the social determinants of health and what work they’re doing • What they’re doing right and what do they need to do better • What them up at night with respect to the policy actions or industry trends

How Technology Innovation Will Play a Critical Role in Prevention

In the session titled “How Technology Innovation Will Play a Critical Role in Prevention” at last week’s 2019 AHIP Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum in Chicago, a gaggle of industry leaders, innovators and change-makers shared their thoughts and ideas on the critical role new innovations in technology will play in preventing serious injuries among the fastest-growing demographic—aging Boomers.

Neel Mehta from Honor moderated a panel consisting of Bryan Adams of Best Buy Health, Dr. Ari Melmed, MD of Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Rajeev Ronanki from Anthem, and Faraz Shafiq of Cambia Health Solutions. The panel shared their take and experiences on the following:

• Latest innovations that can help keep older adults healthy and safe in their homes • The impact technology might have on the social determinants of health • How these technology innovations can result in better outcomes for well-being

Read this post for Highlights on How Technology Innovation Will Play a Critical Role in Prevention of Accidents and Disease

Creating Impactful Member Enrollment Correspondence

HCEG member Sheri Johnson, AVP of Member Enrollment and Billing joined fellow UCare AVP of Customer Service Julie Feirtag presented how their company utilized a cross-functional approach to update member enrollment-related correspondence to improve member engagement and experience, drive member action and support the customer service team.

See this sample of select slides on how Sheri and Julie orchestrated a team to define and employ simple language and standard templates to transform enrollment-related letters into actionable, easy-to-understand correspondence. And check out a few of the specific processes used, steps taken, changes made, and outcomes achieved they shared in their session.

We’ll be sharing more from last week’s AHIP CDF in the coming weeks. For more information, insight, and ideas on healthcare innovation and the transformation of healthcare, subscribe to our eNewsletter and consider becoming a member of the HealthCare Executive Group.

Latest innovations that can help keep older adults healthy and safe in their homes

The impact technology might have on the social determinants of health

How these technology innovations can result in better outcomes for well-being

The remainder of this post shares a few highlights from the session. Access all recordings mentioned in this blog post here.

Highlights on How Technology Innovation Will Play a Critical Role in Prevention

The following are some of the questions that moderator Neel Mehta presented to the panel and some panelist responses to those questions. You can listen to the entire recording – admittedly not of the best quality but still enlightening – here. Specific starting and ending points in the recording are noted below and link to the audio recordings.

Fariz Shafiq: On average, caregivers provide 32 hours a week of unpaid caregiving, essentially a full-time, unpaid job imposing a financial and emotional impact on the caregiver. As a health plan, we recognize that caregiving is an extremely important service. Fariz shared how his organization equips caregivers best:

Help with scheduling appointments and checking the efficiency of patient schedules

Reconciling medications

Help with understanding and paying bills

Rajeev Ronacki: Keeping on top of local resources is a real challenge. We provide members and patients digital apps and help identify and connect members and patients with community-based orgs that can assist them. And we provide an online marketplace where members and patients can also self-serve.

Tech and Touch Must Be Balanced for Innovative Prevention of Accidents & Disease

Q2: The elderly caregiver population, whether it’s home care, provider or family member, are difficult to reach and engage with, regardless of whether they are tech-savvy or not. What are some of the ways you reach this population? (06:45-08:47)

Bryan Adams: Everything starts with balancing the tech vs. touch concept. We want to leverage technology into the home and surround that with robust services. This will ultimately move the needle not only for the healthcare consumer but also for the healthcare system as a whole.

We have ‘healthcare caring centers’ staffed by people encouraged and trained to have a high level of empathy interaction. Mostly telephonic relationships that establish and nurture a tech vs. touch relationship with the senior.

Q3: One of the things that is appealing to tech innovation in healthcare is Artificial Intelligence. What do you think in your perspective as a provider is the role of the healthcare provider in respect to AI? (08:53-12:53)

Dr. Ari Melmed: It’s a new time for providers and physicians. The role of the provider is to partner with the patient and to address their concerns. To get them the right answers. The amount of information available to everyone online is overwhelming. Staying up to date as a physician nowadays only takes 21 hours a day.

Faraz Shafiq: Computers are helping doctors getting better at diagnoses. Healthcare is so complex and the volume of information so great and often so nuanced that AI-powered assistance is needed. (10:42-12:09)

Using Technology & Data to Understand Social Determinants of Health

Q4: I have found that on the medical side there’s a mountain of data. And on the social side there’s a huge and growing amount of data. How can technology support the understanding of how social and community health factors influence outcomes? (13:10 – 15:00)

Rajeev Ronacki: I think the question is what do we do about it? How do we react to it? How do we make it more democratized?

Q5: What are some of the challenges in integrating data, making it uniform, and making it ‘analyzable?’ (15:33-19:18)

Rajeev Ronacki: Roughly 80% of the work we need to do on any AI initiative is data prep: obtaining the data, looking at the quality of data, cleansing and integrating it, creating standards for uniformity. There’s nothing secret about it.

Bryan Adams: Brick and mortar locations enable the touch component of the critical need to balance technology and human touch/interaction mentioned before. This is particularly important for the senior population.

Being entrenched in the neighborhood and being involved with community care initiatives helps us to better understand and capture social determinants of health unique to that area and then take that information and make it actionable. At our company, we’re giving thought on how to leverage our Geek Squad (20,000 people) and over 1200 retail outlets to engage with health plan members and to advance preventive care.

Q7: If telehealth has not yet reached into the home it is gaining a footprint in places like Best Buy, Walmart, and Walgreens. Are you seeing brick and mortar playing a part in expanding the reach of telehealth? (23:40 – 25:20)

Dr. Ari Melmed: Yes. And there are different ways of thinking about telehealth like onsite work clinics which are playing an important role, schools are developing innovative programs, remote clinics are interfacing with centralized, specialized services.

Q8: How has the Medicare market shifted in trying to support senior’s health? (25:24 – 28:50)

Rajeev Ronacki: Increasingly there’s a consumer preference to do things in the home – particularly in the transition to and from the hospital.

Using TV’s and sensors and voice-assistance to deliver the care that’s needed. I would venture to say that 60-70% of the care that doesn’t need active intervention can be provided in the home. The question is how to deliver it in a way that makes sense.

Bryan Adams: Medicare Advantage as a whole has become a hub of innovation and we’re excited about SSBCI and opening up the ability to address social determinants. (27:31 – 28:38)

Can Technology Address 50% of Preventive Health Measures?

Q9: As Rajeev mentioned, with the right technology 60-70% of the care that doesn’t need active intervention can be provided in the home. What will it take to get to widespread adoption of the minimum technology infrastructure needed to address 50% of preventive medicine? (28:50 – 32:13)

Rajeev Ronacki: Some sort of super simple, USB-type device that’s widely adopted by consumers. Installation and implementation need to be simplified and cost-effective.

Listen here from more on how technology in the home may address 50% of preventative medicine.

Q10: Are there any examples of technologies that are starting to scratch the surface of being pretty easy to use? (33:35 – 38:50)

Rajeev Ronacki: Wireless sensors and other devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and easy to use.

Bryan Adams: Passive devices that operate in the background and do not require the member/patient to do anything special or change any behavior. Devices that measure ADL’s and allow the member/patient to keep living their life without any special attention.

Dr. Ari Melmed: Devices that provide feedback on a real-time basis to drive behavior change. Tools to extract information from medical records and help the physician more quickly understand salient aspects of the patient.

As costs continue to rise, more financial responsibility is shifted to individuals, and non-traditional companies disrupt the traditional healthcare space, executives and industry leaders are under tremendous pressure to transform their organizations due to the challenge of providing coverage for healthcare services offering reasonable outcomes at a fair price.

Costs & Transparency, Consumer Experience, and Delivery System Transformation – the key themes of the AHIP-Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum – also ranked as the top three items on the 2020 HCEG Top 10 list of challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare leadership. In addition, ‘Holistic Individual Health’ is ranked as #6.

Ferris Taylor kicked off the session by asking Dr. Lopez “What keeps you up at night?”

The value that payers bring – is not networks or care management services – although those are important. Their true value is data and analytics. How do we consume data and use that data to derive value for our members so they can stay healthier? How do we use that data to engage with our providers to deliver value-based healthcare?

Over the last several years, providers and payers have become more efficient. At the same time, members have not become worse off but they’re also not becoming better. But there’s still opportunity.

Health plans need to ask:

How do we use the data we have in a meaningful way?

How do we couple other readily available data with open-source consumer information and other types of information we have about our members so we can predict outcomes, predict disease, and find the channels where we can best engage our members

How we can find the channels where members/patients can best be engaged?

New Generations Demand New Levels of Engagement & Value

External disruptors are out there, and they know how to engage healthcare industry incumbents. People want the Amazon Experience and right now, healthcare is NOT like the Amazon Experience. Especially as we look at Millennials, Generation Z and other generations of Digital Natives, we know that they will not stand for the experiences they are having today in healthcare.

The health system itself and health care payers specifically have spent a large portion of their existence contemplating their own value buttons. We look at things very much from an inside-out perspective. And that’s been very useful until we’ve come into the age of consumerism. At this time, we need to continue, which we’ve started that migration, to look at things from the ‘outside in.’

We talk about the power of members. The power of consumers. As opposed to people. We don’t own them. They own themselves. The more information we have, the more we can create models and services and products that meet the needs of PEOPLE!

Health plans talk about social determinants of health. I like to think about ‘Social Determinants of Health’ as ‘Social Determinants of Individual Happiness’ – of which health is a component.

Ian related a scenario highlighting how many health plans are not properly focusing on holistic health of the individual. Some highlights include:

Health plans give members things they want to address to drive down medical loss ratio; as opposed to the broader aspect of overall happiness of which health is a component. We give members program’s and tell them to lose weight and do more activities. And then we wonder why they don’t succeed. And the reason they don’t succeed is because they ate too much.

We need to look people more holistically at individuals, focus more on their individual needs, find out what is our role, data, access to healthcare, the digital transformation needed to create that personalized service are all the key things, I think, that are necessary.

Healthcare is complex and it’s hard to learn but so are a lot of other things. And given the right amount of time, the other organizations (disruptors) will encroach upon the health plan. So, health plans must focus on the holistic component of individuals. What makes them happy and improves their lives. And we need to figure out how to do that with data and become an expert at that. Or partner with others who can do that. And we need to stop trying to compete on the commodity-based components of our business.

Barriers to Improved Health – A Broader Definition of Social Determinants of Health

After both Dr. Lopez and Ian Gordon shared some of their insight and ideas on social determinants of health, Ferris Taylor noted that social determinants of health can also be considered as Barriers to Improved Health. Dr. Lopez shared his insight as a physician in the Emergency Room of a hospital serving a low-income area.

Listen to Dr. Lopez’s ideas on how providers, doctors, nurses, payers, and others can help address barriers to improved health: 13:30 – 17:40

And Ian’s follow on to Dr. Lopez’s ideas based on Ian’s experience with Habitat for Humanity: 17:41 – 19:38

‘Costs & Transparency’ and ‘Consumer Experience’ are ranked in the two top spots on the 2020 HCEG Top 10 list of challenges, issues, and opportunities facing healthcare executives in 2020. These two areas of focus for health plans, health systems, and providers – risk-bearing or otherwise – are also frequently referenced on the various lists of ‘Healthcare Predictions & Trends for 2020.’

In a presentation at this week’s 2019 WEDI Winter Conference, Dan Mendelson Founder of Avalere shared some eye-opening facts and statistics that underscore why “Cost & Transparency” is ranked as the top issue facing HCEG member organizations.

84% of consumers believe drug prices are unreasonable

40% of Americans have saved enough to cover a $1,000 emergency

57% of employees are offered a high deductible plan

$13K Average employee health benefit cost

Affordability is #1 issue for Democrats (45%) & Republicans (30%)

Higher premiums, higher deductibles, increasing co-insurance, and surprise medical billing are four trends that really took off about a decade ago and show no signs of slowing down. See more presentations from the 2019 WEDI Winter Conference here.

Strategies to Improve Transparency and Lower Costs

This time of year all the experts, thought leaders and prognosticators are making their predictions about 2020 and beyond. And Cost, Transparency, and Consumer Experience are frequently referenced items on those lists. The following are some of the more detailed predictions, strategies, and tactics to address the growth of medical and pharmaceutical costs and improve transparency and access.

Over the past five years, Consumer Experience has ranked in the #2 spot on HCEG’s Top 10 list four times. HCEG defines Consumer Experience as “Understanding, addressing and assuring that all consumer interactions and outcomes are easy, convenient, timely, streamlined, and cohesive so that health fits naturally into the ‘life flow’ of every individual’s, family’s and community’s daily activities.”

As with ‘Costs & Transparency,” many of the lists of predictions and trends for 2020 and beyond include Consumer Experience as a prominently ranked item. The following are some ideas, strategies, and tactics healthcare organizations may consider to improve the healthcare consumer experience:

Utilize blockchain technology to create a transparent and tamper-proof ledger of all member/patient transactions

Invest in member enrollment and patient recruitment programs

Service members and patients where they are outside the four walls of your office, hospital or practice

Chatbots for self-service and scaling member/patient interactions

Virtual reality providing an immersive experience for members and patients. A virtual tour of a health facility, demonstrating an example procedure and helping patients cope with pain are some examples

Offering a personal experience when it comes to healthcare is vital and today’s healthcare organizations must focus on utilizing digital health technologies to enhance and advance the experience of the healthcare consumer. Given the entry and disruption from non-traditional players like Amazon who’ve set the standard for consumer expectations, not doing so will surely result in extinction.

More on Costs, Transparency, and Healthcare Consumer Experience

Next week HCEG members and select sponsor partners will be presenting at the 2019 AHIP Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum in Chicago. HCEG Executive Director Ferris Taylor and Ian Gordon, Former Sr VP & COO of Regence, will be presenting What Should Be Keeping Health Care Executives up at Night? They’ll share more ideas, strategies, and tactics healthcare organizations can use to improve the healthcare consumer experience. Learn more here.

HCEG member Sheri Johnson, AVP of Member Enrollment and Billing at UCare will present Creating Impactful Member Enrollment Correspondence on December 10th at 3:15 pm. Learn more here.

And Mark Nathan, CEO & Founder of HCEG sponsor partner Zipari, Inc. will present Revolutionizing Consumer Experience With a Single Platform Built for Health Insurance on December 10th at 4:10 pm. Learn more here.

The HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG) was honored to co-host a special Executive Leadership Roundtable October 30th at the 2nd Annual HLTH “Create Health’s Future” Conference. HCEG partnered with the International Association of Innovation Professionals (IAOIP), the Center for Healthcare Innovation (CHI), the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) and Dr. Sunnie Giles for the Boardroom-style event. The title of the roundtable was Flying the Plane While Building the Plane: Do You Have What It Takes to Pilot the Transformation of Healthcare?

Over a period of 3 hours, Charles Stellar, CEO of WEDI, moderated a panel of innovation and healthcare thought leaders as each shared their respective insight

Special thanks to our sponsor partner Appian for hosting this Executive Leadership Roundtable!

Insight into Importance of Trust to Pilot the Transformation of Healthcare

Moderator Charles Stellar introduced each panelist and asked them to present their insight and ideas on healthcare innovation. These initial presentations were then followed by a Q & A period that consumed the majority of the three-hour-long roundtable event. Some of the highlights of this extended period of interaction between panelists and ELR participants are presented below.

View the entire video of the Executive Leadership Roundtable here. Thanks to HLTH for providing this recording.

Lynn Hanessian – Trust in Healthcare is Low and Declining

Lynn Hanessian began her introductory presentation by stating that “If I had a nickel for every time somebody said trust in the HLTH conference, I would be able to pay for my healthcare coverage for about a month.” Indeed trust was mentioned many, many times at the HLTH conference. As a healthcare leader with 19 years of experience focusing on the importance of trust to improve healthcare outcomes and lower costs, Lynn was eminently qualified to speak to the importance and impact of trust as a precursor to true innovation.

Lynn proceeded to present a few slides to let people know what the status of trust in health care systems around the world and emphasized that the story of trust in health care is very different here in the United States than it is anywhere else around the globe. Some highlights of Lynn’s opening comments include:

Compared to other industry sectors, those of us who work in and with health care companies don’t trust our industry any more than those folks that are outside the healthcare industry

In 2019, trust in hospitals and clinics in the US plummeted by an unprecedented 7% compared to data tracked over the last 5 years – during a time when every other sub-sector of the healthcare industry went up

Survey shows people blame hospitals and clinics the most for the cost of health care

People who define themselves as Democrats vs. Republicans have very different views on healthcare and underscore that a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing healthcare – such as Medicare For all – will simply not work.

Start by Championing Healthcare Trust, Innovation, and Change at Home

Additionally, Lynn urged healthcare leaders to start making a move to improve healthcare by telling their stories at home. If your employees don’t understand how that hospital bill got the way it was or how you set your drug prices or the solutions that you’re implementing or the new technologies that are going to change the patient experience, then they can’t be your champion and you haven’t done your job.

Dr. Sunnie Giles – Command and Control Leadership is Anathema to Innovation

Dr. Giles shared how businesses have the operating environment, leadership, basis of competition, and structure have evolved from Medieval-Feudal times through the Industrial Revolution to the modern-day Digital Revolution. Sunnie shared how the focus on maximizing operating efficiency that evolved during the Industrial Revolution brought initiatives such as Six Sigma, ERP, Balanced Scorecards and things like that.

Sunnie went on to share that, while a command and control leadership environment characterizing the Industry Revolution – and still very common in today’s business environment – focuses on producing success through operating efficiencies. She presented how that environment does not allow or support the different, varying opinions, human connections and emotional intelligence that are basic requirements that effect true innovation.

Everything is viewed as a resource including capital land, equipment, raw materials, and even people. Over the decades, legal departments have been trying to systematically remove any elements of emotion in the workplace. Emotions are messy, unpredictable and represent a legal liability. As a result, much of today’s business environment has become very sterile and devoid of human connection. Businesses have profit-maximizing and human connection minimizing machines.

Dr. Jason Woo, MD – Importance of Changing Mindset vs Behaviors

Dr. Woo shared his insight into how when healthcare leaders try to innovate and change things that their innovation initiatives tend to focus on changing behaviors but don’t often address mindsets and culture. Too much focus on changing the behavior results in behaviors such as get clinicians to order certain tests, adopt certain procedures, and change certain relationships. Leaders tend to bring in new training, new strategies, and new consultants to try to get people to behave differently. Innovation programs disrupt people by attempting to force behavior changes without addressing cultural aspects and changing people’s mindset.

By adding layers and layers of demands for behavior change, time and resources are wasted because people resist change when culture does not encourage and support mindset change. Dr. Woo encouraged participants to think about the people their innovation initiatives are disrupting and asked participants how many times they’ve folks gone through process improvement changes.

Nearly all hands from the 70+ participants in the rooms were raised.

When Planting the Seed of Innovation – Tend to the Soil: The People

Jason posited questions about innovation: What’s the right seed to plant to grow innovation? What’s the right technology? What’s the right tool than I need to use to fix this problem?

Dr. Woo shared that if we plant the right seed, we’ll get better outcomes. But the challenge is that while we may plant a seed that’s the best genetically modified seed ever and it may grow. It may produce something less than optimal if leaders don’t cultivate and attend to the soil it’s planted in and will probably not grow as well.

Leaders need to focus on the developing mindsets of the people impacted by the innovation seed planted.

Dr. DeLeys Brandman – Demonopolizing & Amplifying Best-Practice Care

Dr. Brandman shared an overview of Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) – a movement to demonopolize knowledge and amplify the capacity to provide best-practice care for underserved people all over the world. Originally developed to provide innovative treatment for hepatitis C, Project Echo is has expanded across diseases and specialties, across urban and rural locales, across different types of delivery services, and even across the globe.

At its core, Project Echo is about moving information rather than people. Implicit, explicit, and tacit knowledge is shared in actionable chunks rapidly to those best positioned to utilize the information. Essentially echoing an agile approach to knowledge transfer.

One of the hallmarks of HCEG’s roundtable events is open and intimate interaction between panelists and participants. And the ELR at the 2019 HLTH Conference was no exception. The following are some of these questions and panelist responses. We’re providing an audio reply to these questions to minimize the length of this post.

Ensuring Trust with Patients is Key to Transformation of Healthcare

What are some of the more impressive means in each of your experiences for patient empowerment, and tools, and innovation?

One of the things that we’ve seen is the rise in maternal death rates within the United States. How do you see a change in culture and using innovation to help curb maternal death rates within the United States while also ensuring trust with your patients? – Alexa Cushman, Sr. Industry Marketing Manager at Appian

Collaborating in a Many-to-Many Model

Can you give some examples of techniques that you’ve seen in changing the culture in the many-to-many model along the lines of authority and responsibilities? I see us falling short there partly as an industry as we collaborate amongst each other and we talk about innovation in collaboration together. Whose authoritative and/or who’s responsible for each of the variable components?

Connect with Each Other and The HealthCare Executive Group

All in all, the Executive Leadership Roundtable at HLTH was an informative and engaging event allowing participants ample opportunity to interact with panelists and each other on the challenges, issues, and opportunities for innovation in healthcare. Given that the roundtable was the afternoon of the last day of the 4-day HLTH forum, all participants and presenters considered it a great success!

HCEG appreciates the collaboration with Dr. Brandman, Dr. Woo, Dr. Giles, and Lynn Hanessian and extends a special thanks to Charles Stellar of WEDI for moderating the panel. And, again, we want to thank our sponsor partner Appian for helping make this event possible.

If you enjoyed the 2019 HLTH “Create Health’s Future” Conference and would like to participate in a greatly scaled-down yet equally valuable version of this gathering of healthcare leaders, consider being part of the HealthCare Executive Group’s 2020 Annual Forum taking place in Boston. MA on September 21– 23, 2020. Moreover, if you’re a healthcare executive who can benefit from entending your network and collaborating with your C-suite peers, consider becoming a HCEG member.